Politician Under Fire for Giving Chickenwire to Prevent Sexual Assaults on Indigenous Community David Agren - The Guardian
go to original November 1, 2017

Outrage ensued when Iris Aguirre provided chainlink fencing to indigenous communities in Zacatecas to ‘prevent people coming in and raping their girls’ (Iris Aguirre/Facebook)

A politician in northern Mexico has come under fire for giving away chickenwire to inhabitants of an indigenous community as way to stop sexual assaults.

Iris Aguirre posted a photo on her Facebook page in which she posed with bales of chickenwire and poles with a caption saying the materials would be put to use in a rugged region of Zacatecas state populated by the indigenous Tepehuán people.

“In support of our Tepehuán brothers in the Sierra de Valparaíso, we have given mesh to seal off and prevent people coming in and raping their girls,” Aguirre wrote.

The post stirred outrage in Mexico, where authorities have repeatedly addressed the country’s epidemic of sexual violence with stopgap measures while failing to push for investigation and prosecution of offenders.

Previous simplistic responses to the wave of rape and “femicides” include a plan to distribute plastic whistles to women in Mexico City. The city has introduced female-only subway carriages, buses and taxis.

But the country’s authorities have often avoided tougher actions, such as increasing enforcement, investigating allegations of sexual violence or issuing state-wide alerts to address the rising numbers femicides.

Mexican social media users savaged Aguirre’s comments. “They’re proposing locking them up in a cage instead of applying the law and combatting the people that are doing this evil? It’s an upside down world,” read one tweet.

Aguirre followed up her post with another entry on Wednesday morning, saying she was trying to raise awareness of a spate of sexual assaults in Tepehuán communities and that thanks to her publicizing the problem the authorities had arrested three suspects.

Read the rest at The Guardian

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